Saturday, February 2, 2008

Final Thoughts on SB XLII

Why Petty?I've heard people wonder why a 57 year-old guy who hasn't had a hit in years is the Super Bowl half-time act. The answer is easy: classic rock dominates the concert scene. The Top 10 tours of 2007 were:

7 of these acts began their career in the 70's - or earlier. Most of them don't have a new album to promote. Only one of them, the cute kid from the boy band, had a Top 20 album in 2007 (though I'm sure Bon Jovi's concert sales were helped by opening-act Daughtry, who had one of the best-selling albums of 07).

So, if you're for a lip-synced performance that's heavy on dance moves, by all means go for the 20-something singer/dancers who have nice voices but have never touched an instrument in their life. But if you want a live performance, it's only rock and roll for me.

SpygateI haven't touched yet on Spygate. I know the conventional wisdom on this is that spying on the other team is the football equivalent of driving 65 in a 55 zone: everyone does it, there is no harm, and nobody should be punished.

Maybe that's true. I don't claim to be an expert on what teams do about signs, or whether or not it helps much. But I do have one problem with the whole thing: if it wasn't a big deal, why did Roger Goodell hit the Patriots with the biggest fine in league history?

Belichick got hit for $500,000, the team for $250,000 and a first round draft choice. That is a killer penalty. An interesting part of the penalty is that the NFL officially claimed it was for the Patriots' "totality of conduct" and not just the Jets game.

The massive penalty (given by a league that would rather not draw extremely negative attention to its most admired team) and the fact that it was for more than just the Jets game, suggests to me that we still don't know the full story here.

(Update: interesting piece in the Times today, in which former prosecutors question the NFL's investigative techniques. It's highly unusual, they say, to investigate wrongdoing by merely asking the "suspect" to turn over whatever evidence they deem appropriate.)

Play Ball

That's all I got. I can't read, much less write, another word about Coughlin's gregariousness, Plax's knee (and mouth), Eli's vindication, Brady's foot, or anything else. It's time to play the damn game.